To Friendship
by QueenStrata
Summary: An angel is reminded of the sanctity of friendship, on the very worst day of the year.


A/N: I tried not to slash them. Honest.

Warnings: Only A/C if you really want it to be.

Disclaimer: I don't own them, silly.

Dedication: To Syndarys, for buying me six months of paid livejournal time. Agh. I love her so much.

Summary: An angel is reminded of the sanctity of friendship, on the very worst day of the year.

To Friendship 

"What do you want for Christmas, angel?

Aziraphale blinked and stared blankly at the demon sprawled on the bench beside him. His eyes traveled down the black-clad body as he thought about the unusual question.

"Nothing," he decided eventually, and turned his eyes back to the frozen pond in front of him. "That day has become far too commercialized for me to desire any sort of present. The only thing I'll want is to be left alone."

"Alone?" Crowley asked, shooting up into a proper sitting position. "It's still a holy day, isn't it? Don't you want to—"

"No," Aziraphale scowled. "I'm going to end up spending most of the day thwarting wiles, only to find that most of the time there's no supernatural forces acting on the humans. Holidays like this always bring out the worst in people."

"Why don't you take the day off?" Crowley suggested. Both of Aziraphale's eyebrows rose. "Most people don't work on Christmas because they want to celebrate the birth of Christ. You have more reason than any of them to relax."

"I can't afford to take the day off, especially not with you out running amok. I don't think I even want to know how things would end up."

"I can take the day off with you," Crowley suggested hopefully. "Then you won't have to worry about me messing anything up and you can be alone. Well, more or less. Christmas with only me for company can't be that bad, can it?"

"I'm sure it would be lovely, but They might notice…"

"They won't notice anything," the demon shook his head. "You know they're going to be celebrating too. They'll be having far too much fun to care about what's going on with the humans."

"And what about your people?" Aziraphale asked pointedly. "I don't think they're overly fond of Christmas."

"They're not," Crowley grinned. "In fact, they're too busy being miserable and increasing the torture of souls to notice that I'm not doing anything. Besides, there's hardly anything for me to do. I work for an hour or two starting at seven and then I just wander around and watch the misery. I've never had anything better to do with you always overworking yourself."

"So it's just a reason for you to find some entertainment, is it?" the angel questioned coldly.

"Not really. You've been overly angelic since the Apocalypse-that-didn't-happen. You need to stop overcompensating for doing what you thought was right."

"I'm not overcompensating. I acted like a human, pretending I had free will of my own."

"Angel, the only way you could work any harder is to break off the Arrangement. That is definitely overcompensating."

"Come off it, Crowley," Aziraphale sighed. "I have to do my job, even on—_especially_ on—Christmas." The angel stood up and patted himself down, ending up brushing a load of snow off his legs. "I'll see you later, dear. I have some work to attend to." And he took off at a fast pace, leaving Crowley sitting on the bench on his own.

The demon grinned. As soon as the angel was gone from sight, he stood up and made his way to his Bentley so he could return to his flat. This would take a bit of planning.

Aziraphale let out a weary sigh as he let himself back into his bookshop. The day had, as usual, been a complete waste of his time. No matter where he went or what he did, nearly every human had been too caught up in the materialism of the holiday to take any notice of him.

What he really wanted to do at that point was hunt down Crowley and have a nice dinner with him, hopefully not talking about anything too serious. He needed to relax. But he didn't know where his friend was and didn't want to admit that the demon had been right, so he planned to just spend the night reading some of the books he had in his shop. Anyway, he hadn't seen or talked to Crowley in a week, since that night in the park. He didn't know what was going through the other's mind, and if Crowley was mad at him or hurt at his refusal to take the day off….

But he _didn't_ think that Crowley would have tried to do something thoughtful for him. He didn't expect to return to his shop and find Crowley, for once not wearing his sunglasses (they were in a pocket of his shirt instead), seated at one of the two seats at the table in the backroom. He didn't expect to see a handcrafted nativity set in the corner of the room, or a tiny tree in the middle of the table surrounded by a few bottles of wine with bows on them and a few boxes of Aziraphale's favorite foods.

"Took long enough," Crowley yawned, slamming shut the book he had started reading and grinning up at Aziraphale's shocked face. He very carefully poured two glasses of wine and pushed one in the angel's direction. "I thought you might need something to relax with when you got home. Eat some of those chocolates, would you? They took me two days to find. And for Somebody's sake, would you sit down?"

"But what are you doing here?" Aziraphale asked suspiciously, slowly opening the expensive chocolates the demon had pointed out.

"Spreading the Christmas cheer, obviously," Crowley scowled. "Beginning to wish I wasn't, too. This was hard to set up; the least you could do is pretend to enjoy yourself."

"I'm sorry, Crowley," Aziraphale shook his head and picked one of the chocolates up. "I was just so"—he popped it into his mouth—"Mmm. So surprised to find you here with all of this." He looked up at the unusually tense demon and smiled softly. "Thank you, dear boy."

The demon visibly relaxed even as he casually raised his glass to Aziraphale. "Merry Christmas, angel. To us."

"To friendship," Aziraphale corrected gently.

Their glasses came together with a soft, musical clink.


End file.
